“Now, Bo, if we can’t ask about the science, you shouldn’t go naysaying,” Hung said. If meeting an offworlder was unusual or exciting for him, it didn’t show. Then again, his baseline level of excitement was barely lower than that of a baby poodle. “We’ve done three-light-year hops in Iktomi time and again, and we run Jalopy out to the—”
Maud saw him catch himself before he could use the pilots’ nickname, Dumpster. “—out to the Deep Space Relay Station all the time. We’re getting a lotta practice, hauling your luxury products—”
“The pilots’ plan is a good one,” Rubi said, before anyone’s tone could get complainy, before Hung asked what use aliens could possibly make of pipe tobacco and recreational euphorics. “The Solakinder can’t go on putting people into space if we can’t get them back ourselves.”
“Laudable sentiment, Mer Whiting,” Sonika said.
“Frankie’s my daughter,” Rubi said. Strain was suddenly apparent in her voice. “I don’t know about sentiment. None of this is hypothetical for us. Is it, Maud?”
Their follows were in the millions. Maud forced herself to speak, though her jaw felt suddenly rusty. “No. This … We’re not emotionally detached. Not in the slightest.”
A burst of resentment. The Kinze could offer to take one of their ships—their nice, non-glitchy ships with their sustained anyspace envelopes—out to Sneezy. They could have gone out there and come back with Frankie already.
All for a fee, of course. Which would require another vote.
But the last vote had showed the Solakinder were reaching a tipping point. The scale of the latest protests against luxury shortages proved the voters were about done. The Kinze were now dominating purchases of hard goods and entertainment sims alike. People resented the deprivation. Another stakeholder poll …
The other reason the rescue had to be #DIY was unspoken and yet blindingly obvious. Because what if the Bootstrap programs were being sabotaged by Earth’s offworld bankers? The Kinze couldn’t be put in charge of the rescue if they were the ones kneecapping the #supertechs project.
“This way, everyone.” Hung pinged the whole group with the route down the corridor—hardly necessary, but it was a prosocial way to get them all moving. The young pilot led the way, springing off bulkheads like a rubber ball, making the most of the preternatural agility shared by the augmented pilots’ cohort. Herringbo curled itself into a column and caterpillared along one bulkhead. Rubi sprang from the deck, rolled in midair, and caught the first handhold, lithe as a champion swimmer. Allure18 followed.
Maud took a quick glance around, wondering if she should try to chat Irma up. Actually talking to the ballerina would probably alleviate these sudden, wild suspicions about her identity.
After the raid on Manhattan, the police had quietly reunited Maud with Nata. Their names had been changed. Parent and child had gone into what used to be called #witnessprotection, located to London, where nobody knew them.
Frankie hadn’t had the option of anonymity. She’d put a showy tattoo over the scar from her chip. She’d given up her kiddie job at the Department of Preadolescent affairs—given up, or been broomed from it, maybe? She’d gone into the piloting track and spent all her free time with Rubi’s father, his chum Jackal, and Babs. The three of them had made a hobby of sleuthing around, trying to prove that some of the @Visionaries—except they called them the @ChamberofHorrors—had escaped the Manhattan raid. Looking for people who, unlike Upton, hadn’t been caught and sanctioned. People who’d gone into hiding.
Most of all they’d looked for Headmistress, the sapp who’d run the whole show.
Before Maud could engage Irma in conversation, the ballerina leapt away, outdistancing everyone but Hung, catching up with Herringbo and Allure18 in a few swift rebounds.
Maud joined her mother-in-law.
“I’d ask how you are, but I know it’s a ridiculous question,” Rubi said.
By way of answer, Maud plucked the loop of Braille tape out of her pannier and passed it to Rubi, under the guise of giving her a squeeze.
“Here’s the Peepshow—sorry, I mean the observation lounge.” Hung waved them into a glass-fronted mezzanine. Below them was Mission Control, a dozen techs sitting at consoles, each monitoring readouts from Iktomi. “This installation has beefed-up comms, backup power, and redundant Sensorium links. Everything an EMbodied pilot might need for support.”
Until she throws herself into the void and becomes unreachable?
Rubi hissed, slipping the tape back into Maud’s pannier. “Aren’t you two in therapy?”
She shook her head.
“You have to go, when Frankie gets back.”
Have to? She gritted her teeth. “If she gets back.”
Instead of answering, Rubi handed her something—openly, this time. A pendant, of sorts: recycled copper gears on a chain. Embedded inside was an emerald-green transponder, crystalline and perfectly sharp, winking in the light.
“Is this—”
Rubi nodded, answering the unfinished question. “The locator chip Frankie dug out of her arm when she ran away. Gimlet kept it for years. Reminded them of the cost of holding too tight.”
Now she was accusing Maud of being clingy?
“Hey! It’s okay, Maud. Frankie always finds her way back to us—”
“That’s magical thinking.”
Rubi squeezed her hand. “And assuming the worst is catastrophizing.”
“Champ’s loading into the ship,” Hung said. His voice was unexpectedly tight.
Of course it was: he worshipped Frankie.
His eyes met Rubi’s. Skittered away. Standing between them, Maud could feel high-wire tension crackling.
A shareboard expanded front and center in the Peepshow displays, showing footage of the hangar. Champ stepped into Iktomi’s cockpit, a spherical containment unit, pressure-rated and capable of detaching from the saucer. He backed into it, locked his feet down, then knelt against a pair of rests fitted for his knees. Rocking into place against the seat, he adjusted the edges of his suit.
“Bodybag,” Rubi muttered, looking revolted.
“Hung’s fault,” Maud whispered.
Hung bared his teeth, seeming not to hear.
One of the techs brought the augment plug around to Champ’s sacrum, aligning and lubing the five prongs before driving the interface home.
Champ’s body jolted as he disEMbodied. His eyes rolled in their sockets and he went slack, hands drifting in nullgrav before coming up short against tethers clipped to the bodybag. The tech reeled the pod into a waiting socket within Iktomi with a loud snap. A nanotech membrane, like a transparent eyelid, closed over the spherical pod, locking it in.
“Connection to cockpit all to spec,” the tech said.
Maud felt, rather than saw, Rubi’s jolt of surprise. She cleared her throat and said, too casually, “All’s well with Champ and the ship?”
Hung was highlighting the pilots’ biometrics, readings on the pilot’s pulse, body temperature, blood sugar, interface latency. “Champ’s … absolutely fine. He’s good to go.”
All the bounce was gone from his voice.
“Of course he is, dear heart,” Irma said. Smug now. She was seated next to Allure18 and the alien. There was no overtly chummy vibe, but …
Lavender scent. Your dear Frankie. Dear heart. Maud looked from the pendant containing Frankie’s old identity chip to the smooth, unmarked flesh of her own arm. Upton had removed her implant and immediately printed a graft over the incision.
Hung said, suddenly, “Champ, how you feeling? It’s not too late to tag out and let me go.”
“You wish, Brat. I’m fit as a fiddle and ready to fly.”
Another significant Rubi-Hung glance.
“Don’t yammer at him, Hung,” said someone in Mission Control. “We’re in prelaunch.”
Hung wanted to go in Champ’s place; that much was clear.
Irma murmured something to Allure18. Maud strained to hear her
words.
If Irma was, somehow, an EMbodied version of Headmistress, and if Champ and she were, on paper, relations …
What if all Frankie’s most paranoid ideas were right, and the Kinze and Allure18 were sabotaging Bootstrap Projects, with help from Solakinder … collaborators, was that the right word?
Actual realtime treachery. Was it possible?
And what if Irma du Toit really was an EMbodied instance of Headmistress?
Maud’s mind drew a shaky chain of connections.
Upton sniffing around Maud’s house and family.
Rubi and Hung trying to get Champ off the rescue mission.
Irma’s expression remained untroubled as she watched Iktomi disengage from the launch ring. She shifted her weight slowly, her hand sinking under Herringbo, fingers vanishing under those antenna-like sense organs.
Rubi was watching them too.
Humans cooperating with the Kinze to sabotage the #supertechs would need true insiders. They’d need to put people into Bootstrap.
Like a surgeon on quantum comms? Like an FTL pilot?
“Creating anyspace field, three, two, one—” Champ Chevalier said.
Maud opened her mouth to say something. Stop, perhaps? Send someone else?
Iktomi glimmered like sun on ocean, a thousand winks of light on a jagged sea.
Then the ship was gone.
CHAPTER 14
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, PROCYON SYSTEM
EMERALD STATION (INFORMAL DESIGNATION: SNEEZY)
Grind, grind, grind. Search, investigate, data-gather. Argue with Cyril10 about whether or not he and Teagan9 should self-triage.
Just when it was feeling like an endless loop, everything happened at once.
Frankie was in the crew gym, powering through a workout. Nano-supplements could offset much of the bone density loss that came of working in space, but spinning resistance wheels sometimes blunted the edge of her temper.
The burns on Cyril10’s hand were close to infection; Mayfly™ bodies had perilously glitchy immune systems. Frankie wouldn’t have a case for keeping him alive much longer. She might not mind that much, but Teacakes viewed themselves as one true pairing, same as her and Maud. If he went into a spirit vault, mission or no, Teagan9 would probably go too. Eternal love was as close as they came to having a brand. They’d had a hundred-year anniversary, of all things.
Makes the two years since we went from Feral4 to Feral5 seem pretty paltry, doesn’t it?
The thought of Maud, cosplaying Maturin, sent a flicker of lust through her body, followed by loneliness so strong it made her stomach cramp.
All at once, Babs1 announced, “I’ve found something in the camera footage. Also, there’s an incoming signal.”
Here we go!
The station threw up full displays in the virtual control room, bring all the aftside cameras online. The always-eerie anyspace illusion of boiling lava cracked the void, blotting out the stars, momentarily creating an impression of leaking magma. The anyspace extrusion resolved into a slit, then an oval.
Bless Hung and his unending enthusiasm. He’d talked them ’round.
“Babs?” Frankie asked, subvocalizing.
“We’re three hours fifteen from midnight GMT.”
Babs1 said, “@EmeraldCrew: Comms with Iktomi in three, two, one.”
“Emerald Station, this is Iktomi. Y’all there? Come on in.”
Champ? They’d sent Champ? Frankie pretended to wipe sweat from her face, hiding her surprised expression.
Okay, long breath. “Pilot1, come in. We’re all alive and well.”
That got a scoff from Cyril10. She supposed, given his burns, that he was entitled.
“@EmeraldCrew, everyone’s gonna be delighted to hear that. Fancy a ride home?”
“Did you leapfrog out here?” Teagan9 said. “Unbelievable!”
“Believe it, ma’am.” Champ had a licensed and customized set of Browncoat-branded moji for his toon; as he appeared in their virtual control room, he tipped his space-cowboy hat with an exaggerated flourish. “‘T’weren’t nothin’.”
Wanker!
There was a long pause in channel as the three of them absorbed this: Frankie’s chief suspect for saboteur was the one who’d come out to get them.
Cyril10, apparently, opted for denial. “Teagan9 and I will begin encrypting full backups immediately.”
“Happy to load up consciousness vaults for both you imMortals, of course, but let’s not get the cart before the horse,” Champ said. “I need to unplug and unload. We’re gonna hafta do a full systems check on Iktomi.”
Frankie fought a shark grin. He’d be trying to throw a spanner into their works, true, but that gave the crew more chances to catch him on camera.
She said, “We’ll launch HuskyBOTs and retrieve the pilot’s module ASAP.”
“@EmeraldCrew: I’m about 30 percent synced with Iktomi,” Babs1 said, conveniently forgetting to add Champ into the channel.
“Bring up #newscycle from home, soon as you get it.”
Pulling Champ out of the saucer was a process that might take ninety.
How much damage could he do in the time he had?
Stretch out the process of bringing him inside, Frankie thought. All safety precautions, extra diligence. He’d want to wash. Another fifteen or twenty for that?
As long as Champ thought he had all the time in the world to make his move, he wouldn’t hurry.
“70 percent synced,” Babs1 said. “I’ve found—”
Champ said, “Is there an @EmeraldCrew chat channel?”
“Updating personnel roster and sending invite,” Babs1 said.
“Accept,” Champ said. “Pop me outta here, Barnes, or I’ll have to fly the bots myself.”
As if you could. “I’m almost there.”
“Move it. It’s been sixty hours since I plugged in.”
Frankie made a show of firing rockets. In the flesh, she made for the station hangar.
Teagan9 asked, “Did you say you found something, Babs1?”
“Well, howdy there, stowaway!” Champ said to the AI. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
“Babs kind of got stranded in the #portalfail,” Frankie said. “Since this is an emergency, it’s not strikebreaking to take over for Belvedere.”
“In response to Teagan’s question,” Babs1 said, smoothing their immaculate Persian-cat ruff, “I turned up a spider corpse near the site of the lab fire. But it’s a fake—a print job.”
“What?” Cyril10 demanded.
“Lab fire?” Champ said.
Frankie tagged and shared footage of the fire. Anything to keep Champ from auditing the various conversations the three of them had had over the course of the past week, about the high chance that he had been the one to facilitate the sabotage.
“The spider is a counterfeit. And, interestingly, I currently have footage of a shadow about the size of a big spider moving around the server room.”
As Babs1 uttered these words, an alarm bell rang.
Dammit! Whatever it was, it had probably tapped into their comms. It knew Babs1 was on to it and—
“Fire!” the sapp said. “Fires in primary server room. Fire in med storage.”
“The consciousness vaults!” Cyril said.
Frankie paused the HuskyBOTs. Nobody could fault her for leaving Champ to marinate in a bodybag if the station was about to blow. If flames got to the portal membrane, all of this would have been for nothing.
“Babs, do you have a visual on the intruder?”
“I’m rather busy attempting fire control before my brain and Teacakes’ backup vaults literally burn to ash.”
Frankie pushed off a bulkhead, making for med storage. “How bad is it?”
“We might save server room two,” Babs1 said.
“Not the primary?”
By way of answer, Babs1 shared footage. Fire was gouting directly from the server banks. “Incendiary nanobeads have been injected directly into
the circulator—”
It was as far as she got before the entire databank incinerated.
“Babs!”
Too slow, two steps behind, move it move it move it!
Teagan9 was already on the case, directing fire suppression bots as they poured foam, trying to save the infirmary.
“Kitten!” Frankie hollered.
“I’m golden,” Babs1 said, momentarily sounding more like the original version of herself. She could run on vintage equipment. The primary server was state-of-the-art stuff, but the redundant server rooms ran life support and other essential systems without using tish banks. “Assuring air circ and safeties.”
Frankie subbed, “Where’s Cyril?”
“Hangar-bound. This fire’s getting ahead of us, people!”
“No oxygen, no fire.” Frankie calculated quickly. If the station were a clock, the two biggest blazes were at eleven and one o’clock respectively. The hangar occupied the wedge from two to four.
“Seal the hatches and blow the air out of the three adjacent compartments?” Teagan9 suggested.
“Yeah, that’s my thought.”
“It separates us from the hangar. We’ll have to go the long way round to get to the men.”
“Beats burning to death, doesn’t it?”
“That’s your call, Frankie.”
Frankie signed understanding. “Fight the fires, Tea. I’ll tow your flesh out of danger.” Frankie reconfigged her primer, converting her lower pants legs into rope, and winding a makeshift harness around Teagan9, the better to pull her toward crew quarters.
The medic glazed immediately.
“Babs1, systemwide announcement. Live audio,” Frankie said. “Attention attention attention. We will be venting atmosphere in sections two, three, and four of Emerald Station. Anyone who expects to continue breathing needs to either suit up or evacuate those sections.”
“Who are you telling?” Babs1 asked.
“Our spider ghost?”
“It’s gotta be a bot, doesn’t it?”
Frankie didn’t reply. She’d warned it, whether it had a life to risk or not.
The primary server room, med storage, and their main printer were burning briskly.
“@EmeraldCrew, I’m coming aboard to help out.”
Dealbreaker Page 11